3 Reasons to Supplement Your Existing Staff with Outsourced Expertise

Statistics published by US Small Business Administration showed that 56% of US small businesses have fewer than 5 employees. For really small businesses, this might be enough. But what if your employees cannot handle all the work that comes in? You can easily hire more people, but if you’re a small business, this may not be the best option for you. So what can you do to bridge the divide between work and human resources and earn more revenue? One solution is to get outsourced expertise. Here are 3 benefits to supplementing your existing staff with outsourced expertise.

Access to an Ocean of Knowledge

In this age of the Internet, outsourcing expertise means you have the whole world to look for help even if you’re just a small business. This actually levels the playing field and allows your company to be competitive against the big ones. You can get access to many niches of knowledge without having to hire a dozen people locally. This is but one of the many reasons why 43% of IT companies in the US outsource expertise offshore.

Accelerate Output Turnover Time

If your small business is here in the US, then you can hire someone for a specific project on the other side of the globe who’s ahead 12 hours or more in the calendar. This means you can, in principle, give the instructions today, say for an SEO-friendly article, and get the output on the next day. This work time is equivalent to having a full-time employee working overtime (overnight) without the loss of productivity due to fatigue.  Output turnover time for projects is reduced.

Cost Reduction

Let’s face it, professional work rates in the US can dampen the expansion hopes of small businesses and limit growth. This is a primary driving factor why the outsourcing of workers and experts offshore has grown so fast. For less than the minimum wage in the US, you can hire someone in India or The Philippines (both English-speaking countries) to work on company projects that would otherwise cost you five times as much or more if you hire a local expert. Paying fees lower than US standards to such workers and experts is possible because the price of the dollar in these countries is still high.

Given that the total number of US jobs outsourced offshore is 2,637,239 in 2013, you could be missing out on the advantages of outsourcing expertise offshore if you’ve not made it a part of your business planning. With outsourced workers doing the critical customer- or product-based output for you, you can focus on company management which is essential for you to grow your small business. 

5 Pawn Stars Tips for the Entrepreneur

The "Pawn Stars" shop in 2010. Photo by Mike Salvucci

Chumlee. Pic by Kristina

Pawn Stars. Who would have guessed that a television show about people haggling in a pawnshop would be the recipe for a huge hit? Envisioned by the History Channel as a vehicle to feature historical tidbits behind pawned items, the show also teaches us lessons on entrepreneurship. Here are five tips for the entrepreneur inspired by Pawn Stars.

Tell a Story
Everyone loves a good story. For some primal reason, a story can engage and captivate your audience and gives credence to the product or service you're selling. In Pawn Stars, every item brought in to be sold or pawned has a history, which audiences always look forward to.

As an entrepreneur, storytelling can be an ally in dealing with customers. Based on a survey by the Internet Advertising Bureau, 90% of customers are more inclined to recommend a brand if it's socially engages them. If you tell the kind of story that captures the attention of your customers and engages them with your brand, then they're as good as sold.

Product First. Price Second
In Pawn Stars, haggling is a given. Both sides want to get the best deal and try to justify their asking price. In marketing, this is akin to identifying a unique selling point or proposition (USP) that supports the given price. Pawnshop owner, Rick Harrison sometimes argues, "Well, I still have to earn a profit from it," and it can work in his favor as it’s a fact, but from the customer’s point of view, it's all about you and money, when what they really want to hear is something about the product that they can weigh in and then stick a price tag to that.

It's the Customer's Good Deal
The dynamics of the deal means one or the other gains control over the deal-making. The winner is the one who makes the other pause and say, "All right. It's a deal." As the seller, you tend to want to be in control (since there's the word "profit" flashing in the back of your head). But even so, you must always think of what the customer wants. Ask yourself, “How can the customer enter your store, feeling that he will be getting the best deal of his life?” A good start is to ask the customer about their needs and work to give it. The customer who always gets a good deal is the one who will keep coming back for more.

Customers Are Your Spokespeople
To promote Pawn Stars, father and son team, Rick and Corey Harrison, went on tour as far as Asia in countries like Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. They went out of their way to meet and greet fans and curious onlookers alike. By reaching out to the people, Pawn Stars was able to create word of mouth hype which quickly spread on the Internet. Suddenly, everybody was talking and blogging about how friendly and smart the Harrisons were, and then tune in to the History Channel to watch the show. “I’ve met them and they’re great,” they’d say, and the word spreads.

Show You Deserve Attention
Pawn Stars had this idea of telling tidbits of history around old items, but it’s still about a pawnshop business and the people who run it. In the show's introduction, Rick Harrison says something like, "You never know what's coming through that door," yet everyone expects him to know something about an item or he finds a way to find out. His customers rely on him to know his stuff. As a business person, you must also know your stuff. If you prove your worth, they will come.

Pawn Stars

Anecdote: When Rick Harrison was in the Philippines promoting the show's new season in 2013, he said the reason the show was so successful was because of Chumlee. The crowd cheered.

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